Re: Why the Widening Gender Gap in Computer Science?
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 11:42 PM, Helen Faulkner <helen@debian.org> wrote:
> I ask because I'm in Australia, and in most cases Australia and New Zealand are
> extremely culturally similar. And in Australia it's true that women, especially
> those with children, still do the majority of parenting and housework tasks.
> It's still connected, in my opinion, to the way that women, in general, earn
> less on average than their male partners. So it still makes financial sense for
> most couples to choose for the woman to stay at home with the kids, while the
> man keeps on working in paid employment.
>
> Most of the parents I know (nearly all young, highly educated professionals and
> parents of young children) have mum working part-time and dad working full time,
> with the children in part-time daycare. I don't know any couple where mum works
> full time and dad works part time, though there are surely some out there.
That's pretty close to the perceptions I have about couples of my
generation having children in NZ too. I think most fathers (and
indeed, male partners of women in general, not just parents) take on
their fair share of household work. But in every case I can think of
where someone around my age has had a baby, it's been the woman who's
stayed at home, stopped working, and looked after the baby full time,
until it's old enough for some external care, and then worked part
time.
The idea totally freaks me out to be honest - I grew up with this idea
strongly entrenched that as a woman, the best way to work towards
feeling like I was living in an equal society was my ability to earn a
good income (sure, in NZ I think it's still only 80% of men's but at
least I'm self sufficient)... having a baby and putting my career on
hold and being completely reliant on someone else for food and shelter
is ... like, brain falls over and I go into shock :)
Penny
--
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